First Name

Location

Height

Body Weight

Squat PR

Press PR

Deadlift PR

2lb tricep kickback?
10lb cheat curl in the squat rack?
200lb Quarter Squat?
Doesn't matter which movement, post a new PR in this thread to help motivate the Ironstrong Brotherhood and Sisterhood!
Edit: All rep PR's count, doesn't have to be 1 rep efforts!

It's coming to the end of the year and me and Neil decided to throw down some PR's to assess our progress over this past year.
From a personal perspective, it's been a year of immense progress. Around the same time in 2010 I was sitting at home reading articles on strength training; websites like Mehdi's Stronglifts 5x5 and T-Nation were primary sources but I soon found people like Mark Rippetoe, Jim Wendler etc. I was fat, weak, spotty, sweaty and a disgusting blob. I was looking at myself in the mirror and hating what I saw. It made me really unhappy and, coupled with other events in my life, prolonged a period of clinical depression which finally dissipated around July/August 2011 (I've suffered since I was 14 so that's 14 years of self-hate).
Reading the articles I did I realised I could change my life if I really wanted to. I had been in touch with an old work colleague, Neil Porter, for a few months and because of our humour we had clicked from the moment we first met. However, when we both found other jobs and I got married and had kids we lost tough. In 2010 we became good friends again and decided we would go to the gym and give the Stronglifts programme a try.
We started with an empty bar, as directed, and felt like chumps in the gym. We started off our first session in the wrong gym (mix up with the street) but we recovered from that and got to work. In our first session, one guy was squatting 80kg and I was looking on enviously, even though the guy was using a "pussy pad". However, I knew that I would be happy getting to that stage and I told Neil this. He agreed with me but we both knew it would take a long time.
We followed Stronglifts to the letter for 3 months. We had a couple of stalls along the way; Neil with the press and me with my bench. But we stuck at it for another 3 months with further stalls on squats and deadlift etc. The normal run of the mill stuff really. However, Neil needed some surgery on his finger and this meant taking a 4 week break. I went on holiday as it seemed convenient to do so. We started back and immediately something wasn't right. I don't know if I had suffered from the time off but I tried to start back on what I was doing before. I ended up knackering my back up good and proper by slipping a disc squatting.
I thought I had gotten better after 3 weeks and tried deadlifting. I ended up hurting my back again and nearly passed out with the pain. It was that intense. I took a couple more weeks off and me and Neil decided to changed the programme because we were squatting 3 times per week by this stage at relatively high weights. Neil's knees were screwed too and we switched to Madcow. This was also a mistake based on our goals because squatting 3 times per week was messing up Neil's knees again.
By this time we wanted some more variety in our programme and Wendler's 531 seemed to be the answer; more variety but still focusing on the main lifts. We started on the second week in October and have never looked back.
So, PRs:
Neil will put his here later I imagine.
Mine are as follows and bear in mind I only started lifting in Jan 2011, have taken 7 weeks off over the year, suffered a slipped disc and recurrence of that injury meaning I had to reset my weights by 50%.
Squat - 170kg (374lbs)
Press - 90kg (198lbs)
Bench - 85kg (187lbs)
Deadlift - 200kg (440lbs)
I have also lost weight!
Dec 2010 - 22 stone 4lbs (141.5kg)
Dec 2011 - 18 stone 9lbs (118kg)
TARGETS for 2012
Squat - 200kg (440lbs)
Press - 125kg (275lbs)
Bench 120kg (264lbs)
Deadlift - 250kg (550lbs)
Weight target - 17 stone